Artiphon has announced that the Instrument 1 – a new expressive MIDI controller – is now available for pre-order.
Here’s a video overview of the Instrument 1, from Artiphon founder Mike Butera:
The Instrument 1 is a MIDI controller that can be played in many ways – like a guitar, a violin, a cello, a drum controller and more.
The Artiphon Instrument 1 is available for pre-order for US $399. See the Artiphon site for details.
just this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWO5Ai_a80M
its a great idea and affordable, but my only reservation is if you invest time as well as money in to these things and they go out of production or fashion you have wasted that time. traditional controllers with a keyboard have that future proof (well in my life time at least) element.
but hats off its a great product, and hats off for trying to make the change happen
But the layout looks like a guitar. It should still be possible to transfer that muscle memory to a guitar. And it will also make more sense when playing virtual instrument guitars vs using a keyboard controller.
” my only reservation is if you invest time as well as money in to these things and they go out of production or fashion you have wasted that time”
You shouldn’t make your controller decisions based on fashion – but based on the instruments and tools that do what you need.
The Antiphon – along with things like the Continuum and the LinnStrument – will do things no keyboard controller can do.
So traditional keyboard controllers are already obsolete for anyone that wants an instrument that can do expressive polyphonic MIDI control.
While it may be true that your skills are, for the most part, non-transferable, and your options are limited to the product range of one particular company, here’s the counter argument: the benefit of something like this (and obscure instruments in general) is that it’s all virgin territory. You’re not competing with the greats that have come before you, or tens of thousands of contemporaries. You’re starting on the ground floor, and can carve out a niche for yourself more easily than, say, picking up a guitar for the first time.
Theoretically, at least.
Nice, pre-order only allows to select United States as ship to country…
With controllers like this, would it be possible to pay some very musical musician $200-500 per week to practice a couple hours a day and show us what “mastery” looks and sounds like. Not sure how long that might take. But that seems like a pretty reasonable beta testing phase for something like this.
Will it work with guitar hero?